Silicon Valley 2033
by SSFSX17
Summary: A simple visit to the US goes horribly wrong for the Knight Sabers. More to Fargo than meets the eye. Those silly French are at it again too.
1. Chapter 1: Son of Sun

Silicon Valley 2033

Based on Bubblegum Crisis

Disclaimer: Bubblegum Crisis and related properties are all the properties of their respective owners. The author of this fanfiction claims no responsibility for any of the content, especially the personalities of all the original characters. Therefore, when something like Daley going to San Francisco and scaring you happens, it wasn't my fault. Also, all companies (especially the ones in Silicon Valley) belong to themselves and their shareholders.

Chapter 1: Son of Sun

"Therefore, as soon as you have enclosed the Boomer in a small enough space, you should commence melee tactics to minimize damage to the surrounding area." Leon hadn't spoken English for quite some time, since he had stopped speaking to his parents almost as soon as he had joined the AD Police. He would have liked to have said this in a more exciting way, like "When you've got him surrounded, you can proceed to kick his butt!" The american SWAT team sitting in front of him looked very bored.

"I have a question, Mr. McNichol," said one of them.

"Yes?"

"Even assuming that you're probably going to start on these 'melee tactics' by, say, sticking a nice big metal pole into the Boomer, you'd obviously have to have at least two to three people fighting the thing at the same time, and if any of 'em don't push as hard as they can, then the Boomer's gonna be smart enough to grab one of yer guns and kill ya with it." The SWAT officer then slumped back into his seat.

"That is correct," Leon conceded. In fact, that was exactly what happened once before. "In this case, it will help you to operate a combat suit."

The officer continued to hammer the ADP detective. "Since most boomers have laser cannons in their mouths, and in some cases, have gigantic automatic cannons for arms, it's actually _more_ dangerous to use a combat suit, cuz the Boomer is just gonna blow ya away point blank and ya can't even out-maneuver the thing cuz ya'll be trapped in a freaking coffin."

"Regardless, it is necessary to keep the risk to civilians to a minimum."

"I say we screw the civs and tell them to carry around bigger guns." The officer showed Leon his M43AB2 hand cannon. "I mean, the best rogue Boomer is a dead Boomer."

Leon wiped off his forehead with his handkerchief. Daley wasn't going to back him up for this lecture. "Umm... today's meeting is dismissed." Those lousy Americans were so rude and inconsiderate. He nervously began to pack his notes and papers so that he could leave as soon as possible. Daley smirked sideways and followed Leon all the way to the coffee pot. Leon was somehow glad that he was unaware of the Americans during this time; indeed, he remembered nothing in between that American's remark and him guzzling some hot coffee.

"Would you like me to comfort you?" asked Daley, leaning over his shoulder.

"Not right now, Daley," replied Leon. "I just want to go back home. Americans scare me more than Boomers ever did." But at that moment, he saw a woman wearing a tanktop and sweats walk in and steal the coffee pot right out of his hand. "Hey!"

"I smelled your blood today," said the woman. Her left arm was totally cybernetic, and she wore dog tags for some odd reason.

Leon almost fell backwards. "Jeena! Um, I knew you'd moved to America, but I didn't know..."

"You've had a hard time finding a woman ever since, I can see." She smiled evilly at him. "In fact, I bet that you now resort to hitting on underage girls who work in the office, am I right?"

"No, not really, I mean, I don't do anything like that," he stammered in Japanese. "I mean, there's always Priss, and"

"Your new partner too, I bet."

"No! No! NO! Absolutely not!" But that didn't stop Daley from laughing out loud.

Jeena turned away. "If you decide that you'll accept me once and for all, you know where I'll be."

* * *

Zax Kirkbride took off his gloves, boots, belt, and shirt. It was a rough day today, fighting off some berserk Boomers in the middle of the Great Mall. It was a good thing he had remembered to put on his gloves, boots, belt, and shirt for the fight. This new DarkSuit technology was good for something after all. He'd never thought that the sleazy salespeople who sold the thing could have actually told the truth about it.

He turned on his computer and browsed through some news websites. Yahoo.com: "Boomeroid linked to bombings claims ownership of all our base. The CIA discovered the final video log of the USS Dow Jones, which contained a message from the terrorrist proclaiming 'All your base are belong to us.' It is unknown if the Dow Jones was able to launch its complement of Zig fighters in time." CNN.com: "German economy barely recovering from Largo strike." MSNBC.com: "SDPC linked to China." Foxnews.com: "Crazy liberal ideas at root of world depression." USAtoday.com: "Huge battleship QUEEN FOSSIL approaching fast!" Washingtonpost.com: "Famous Japanese anchor Mr. Drinkwater too drunk to report." TheNation.com: "Vigilante suits hinder Boomer unionization." NewYorkTimes.com: "Australia begins export of Kangaroo Boomer."

He had enough of this crap. There was never any good news on anymore. Then again, it made perfect sense: the only good news was bad news. It was only bad news that people wanted to pay money to read about. Maybe the TV wasn't as thoroughly corrupted as the Internet. There were some pretty stupid people on the Internet.

"Are you over 65 and living by yourself? You are very vulnerable to Boomer attacks!"

The image on the TV screen changed to that of an old man sitting alone with a lot of bandages and casts on his body. "I thought that having a number of high-powered automatic weapons under my bed was enough to fend off Boomers. But I never could have expected that one of them would have gotten past my electrified fence, illegal Doberman guard Boomers, invisible landmines, point-defense laser turrets, and twenty ex-Navy SEAL security guards. But one day, it happened. A boomer got past all of them and threw me to the ground! Luckily, the costs to my (mostly cybernetic) body were covered by Cromwell's Anti-Boomer Insurance." The main host of the commercial came back on.

"You may think that the Senior Military Compounds that are hundreds of miles away from any major city are enough to protect you. But you never know." The TV screen showed a Bu-55C flying up to an old woman and pushing her over to the ground. "Press my phone number on your TV screen right now to buy Cromwell's Anti-Boomer Insurance today! You can never pay too much for it!"

Zax kicked the TV off. Television wasn't what it used to be, either. Maybe talking to people was safe. After all, if talking to people wasn't safe, then nothing was.

Jeena, his partner, walked into the room. "Hey, Zax, how was your day?"

"Was doing fine, until I tried to relax at the end of it."

"Me too. I met one of my old friends today. He visited me from Japan. He didn't want to talk about things."

"Is he the one with the slicked-back hair from AD Police?"

"Yeah."

"For the whole week that he's been here, he's done jack. Except maybe tell us new ways to get ourselves killed. I know that it's perfectly fine for ADP troopers to have bad aim and get used as walls and all, but we do things a bit different in America."

"Maybe that's why I moved."

"I thought you liked seeing rookies get torn to pieces, either by your hand or from duty."

"Maybe I still miss my old job."

"Yeah, whatever." Zax opened the fridge and got a beer. "I guess they're too used to those woman hardsuits doing all the hard work for 'em. Whoever they are."

"Hey, that was below the waist. I know _I_ did my share." Jeena played with her dogtags with her mechanical arm. "Everything that you were told to do worked pretty well for us back in those days."

"We suffered our first death when we tried to airdrop a combat suit unit the ADP way."

"That means you had incompetent paratroopers under your command. How is that ADP's fault?"

"They said it worked, even against military boomers, but both of my guys died. They barely managed to get an even tradeoff of two lives for two boomers destroyed. That's just not acceptable." Zax walked out of the room and took his DarkSuit with him. He wouldn't want it to be mistaken for normal clothes.

"You jerk." Jeena couldn't understand why she'd stayed in an American SWAT team. Maybe it was because the mentality of the whole team suited her. At least in America, her attitude was actually pretty normal. In MegaTokyo, she had a hard time getting Leon's attention. Turned out she still did.

Just then, the red alert went off.

* * *

Zax put on his gloves and boots first. Then he put the shirt on. Finally, the belt. This was the full extent of the DarkSuit. It was extremely convenient and weighed almost nothing. Even the ultra-thin combat suits, whose capabilities were comparable to the first appearance of the Knight Sabers, weren't this awesome.

The truck stopped in front of Sun Microsystems. A recent explosion had torn a JAVA sign in half. The doors of the van burst open, and the SWAT commander was ready to tell him the deal.

"Three military Bu-12bs inside, one more holding us off at the front door. It's the Nortaneous gang again, and we think it's about drugs again."

"That makes absolutely no sense, but I'm on it." Zax was wondering a lot of things right now. For starters, where the hell did the Nortaneous get so many military Boomers, why was it always linked to drugs, and why was it always him who had to rush to the rescue? It was also possible that his DarkSuit was making him very useful for resolving this situations within an hour or two. He ducked over by one of the snipers, who told him their progress without even having to shift his aim. Good old fashioned American snipers. They knew how to shoot, and that was more than he could say for anti-Boomer enforcement anywhere else in the world.

Zax adjusted something on his belt and a wave of invisibility passed over him. He ran around the building (why were Silicon Valley companies so obsessed with wide and short buildings?) and climbed onto the roof, where he had a better view of the action. He then put on a pair of glasses, a nice addition to the DarkSuit, letting the Commander see what he saw. What he saw was one military Boomer at the front entrance failing to pierce the barricade of armored infantry fighting vehicles, but nevertheless stopping them from shooting back. The other Boomers were still inside, as the Commander remembered, and they were looking for something inside. This had nothing to do with drugs, and he knew it, but the excuse at least let them steal money from the US Department of Justice.

He began crawling along the roof and dropped right behind the Boomer, in front of the double doors. He grabbed its head and tore it right off. The Boomer turned around but could not see him for obvious reasons, so he took the opportunity to kick it to the ground and punch its chest in. He reached into the pulsing mass and pulled out its data unit, tossing it back to the barricade. They acknowledged and closed in closer around the building while some troopers huddled up to the doors.

Zax snuck into the building and saw that it was just a mass of computers, cubicles, and the occasional office. Lucky for the workers that today was JAVA day, a paid holiday. He ran up a wall and, satisfied that his boots were sticking to the ceiling, started running. He snuck into a ventilation shaft, crawled through it until he saw a Boomer right under him, and dropped on it. The Boomer responded by firing its machine gun in all directions except up and down. Zax grabbed the Boomer hard in its exposed armpits and shocked it with millions of volts of electricity. The Boomer eventually lay down and stopped moving after a few seconds, letting him pull off its frontal armor plate and extract the data unit. He wiped it off and pocketed it.

One started heading his way, but the other stayed where it was doing whatever it was doing. A bazooka shell flew through the side of the hallway towards him, so he outstretched both hands in front of himself. The shell stopped, turned around, and flew right back into the Boomer's face. He ran at it and punched all the way into it, pulling out its computing and data units. The last one did not come. Perhaps it was displaying signs of intelligence - it was avoiding him.

In that case, he would have to come to it. He jumped into a ventilation shaft again and headed for the room it was in. It was totally oblivious to his presence - or seemed to be, anyhow. It was designed differently, because he could see that it had some sort of cargo pouch in its body. It was grabbing every single disc it could see and shoving them into this pouch. He dropped on it, but it didn't react at all. He reached in and squeezed the power unit, shutting it down. Stupid Boomer. Maybe it wasn't that smart after all. It was also quite an anticlimactic ending to this incident. He'd had more exciting incidents with civilian Boomers.

* * *

"We are still analyzing the evidence, but we have a clue." The commander sipped on his coffee, then resumed. "Sun was developing a Java virtual machine for many different types of Boomer brains and advanced AI computer cores. We believe that Nortaneous was paid a sum of money to get the programs through any means necessary. But we don't know who would send them - besides Genom, they could have been the Cult of Linus Torvalds, Microsoft, the Black Knight Python group, or even those damn Chinese."

"Hou Bang, I presume," commented one officer.

"Maybe. We don't have any leads." The Commander finished his coffee. "Anyways, the FBI are officially on the case now. That means that we might have to protect them, since they only know how to kill regular people." He turned to pace to the side for a moment. "Oh, and by the way. I'd like the ADP representatives to be honorary troopers in Kirkbride's unit. I think they'll be able to learn a few things from each other. The meeting is dismissed."

Everyone slid out of their chairs, onto the floor, and through the doors while grumbling. Zax was at least able to see where he was going. Meetings normally bored him so much that he went blind and deaf.

He was assaulted by an obnoxious fellow with slicked hair. His hand was being furiously shaken as he heard the guy's face exclaim, "I'm Leon McNichol, at your service!"

"You're the guy who told us new ways to get killed?" Zax stopped walking. "I'll tell you what. In my unit, you do things my way. This is SWAT, not ADP, and we're in Silicon Valley, not MegaTokyo. Got it?"

Leon shouted "Aye-aye, understood!" He then turned to Daley and whispered in Japanese, "We must make a good impression on the Americans, they seem to be a tough crowd."

Daley shrugged, and answered, "I just want to see if this paradise called 'San Francisco' really exists, or if it is just a myth of my people."

Zax grabbed Leon's shoulder. "Hey, dude, I don't understand a single word of Japanese except for 'hentai,' but we're going to talk to each other in English and understand each other, okay? We're going to communicate and build trust and all that stuff. It's our way."

Leon was amazed. "I see..."

* * *

Jeena starting rounding the corner of the sidewalk. The newspapers were still printed and distributed by hand in the US. In Japan, she remembered how everyone downloaded and printed out their own customized papers. She leaned over a bit to read some of the headlines.

San Jose Mercury News: "Japanese female stockbroker to testify against Larry Ellison. Stockbroker and analyst Linna Yamazaki is arriving at SFO today in order to offer a crucial piece of evidence that would imply that Larry Ellison's samurai boomers for his feudal Japanese ranch were illegally purchased from Genom at a much lower price than..." Santa Clara County Journal: "J-pop invades San Jose! One of the biggest international concerts ever will be held at the Shark Tank for the next two weeks, nonstop! Some of the bands scheduled to perform on the first day are TheAngryBottleSalespeople, KA-SA, Zeiram, Not-Quite-Dead-Yet, Flower, Priss and the Replicants, Junx, Jukebox Gundam, F-4..." The San Francisco Chronicle: "Lingerie fashion show to attract independent shopowners from around the world." The Oakland Tribune: "Hacker's convention not banned by feds, international attendance expected." The Argus: "Alameda County Fair to feature auto show with expensive import motorcycles."

Jeena realized that she had just spent over two minutes scanning over the headlines and thinking about them. She just wanted the world to make sense in her head right now, and the headlines didn't help. They had no connection and were totally unrelated, much like many of the things that happened in her life. She was also somewhat disappointed that Leon was going to be in Zax's unit instead of her own. After all, her own unit got to do much more exciting things. She knew that Leon and his partner would end up just watching him kill Boomers quickly with those gloves of his. At least she got to pry Boomers open with poles and shoot them in the face at close range. Not to mention that Leon could be her subordinate once again. It would have been fun indeed.

In the distance, she saw a Genom tower. It was shorter than the other towers, mostly to fit in with the style of the other buidings around it. It was still a whole five stories tall, though, and that was a humongous tower by Silicon Valley standards. And a small trailer compared to her memories of the skyscrapers of MegaTokyo. This particular Genom tower, if she remembered correctly, was only a theory and research facility. It wasn't about to have the kind of boomers in it that she had been used to destroying in Tokyo.

She walked up the stairs to her apartment and went in.

* * *

Quincy, or perhaps one of his doubles, was sitting at his usual desk and talking to a board of Genom executives. This was the Operations Board, the people who were in charge of doing things like operations. He was hoping to weed out any more potential traitors in the board, since Mason aka Largo had set his plans back a bit.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that you failed to acquire the Son of Sun. It would have finished our monopoly over the computing of all Boomers and AI computers. Therefore, you shall all be penalized by my viewscreens in each of your offices constantly watching you."

He cut the communications line. He leaned back and sighed. He folded his hands on his desk and looked down at the work for today. He was glad, though, that there were so many of him to do this work.

End Chapter 1: Son of Sun


	2. Chapter 2: Restaurant Rumble

Silicon Valley 2033

Chapter 2: Restaurant Rumble

* * *

Nene found the convention floor to be a little bit too crowded for her liking. She had to push and shove everyone just to make it to the gutted computer exhibition. Nevermind that everyone was already a few feet away from her, it always helped to push them out of the way.

One american boy started following her. He was wearing jeans torn to shreds and kept together only by safety pins. His hair was spiked up like a mohawk, and his black sweater was covered with oldies band names like Nirvana, Limp Bizkit, and Newer Order. Nene looked back and saw that he was still behind her. She started walking a little bit faster, and he came even closer.

Finally, exasperated, she turned around and shouted "What do you want?" She still remembered some English from asking Leon to teach her some.

"Hey. You know, it's pretty rude to push and shove people." The boy was probably not even a boy at all. His voice made him sound more like he was 25 at least. "But you know what? I'll pretend you didn't do that if you have dinner with me at an expensive restaurant."

Nene stumbled back for a moment. Americans could be so frighteningly direct, but this one at least had a sense of courtesy. How nice of him to ask her over! "I'm going to look at these things first," she said very slowly, so that she could pronounce all the words correctly, while pointing at the gutted and seriously overclocked computers.

"Alright, I can live with that." The boy smirked.

* * *

The lawyer leaned over towards Linna, obviously tired by the fact that he had been questioning other witnesses nonstop for the past few hours. "So, tell us about the report on Oracle's stock you wrote last month."

Linna cleared her throat and began, in a language that she had not learned until the past year to get into the business world, "We found their accounting practices in the wrong, and the numbers did not add up correctly."

"Okay, so about these accounting practices, what happened to... shoot, I forgot. Your honor, I would like a recess."

The judge suddenly stopped drawing a sketch of the room. "Huh? Ah, yes, of course. The court is adjourned and will reconvene tomorrow at the usual time." He slammed his gavel, waking up everyone else in the courtroom and making them ooze out of the doors.

Linna wiped her head off with a handkerchief. She had almost thought that she would have to endure the same long grueling process that everyone else in her company did today.

Her lawyer caught up to her. "Hey, I'm sorry that I just totally messed things up today..."

Linna interrupted him. "It's okay. I will be fine."

"Well, I was thinking of talking about this over dinner. I mean, I could use something to eat."

* * *

The model turned away and started walking back from whence she came. Sylia was too busy talking to someone to notice that the model's outfit was one of hers.

"How can you be so certain that Genom is going to be broken up soon?" asked Sylia.

Her companion, a man in a cheap suit who didn't shave or sleep often, replied, "There is increasing pressure from all sides, both from outside and within, for each division to break off and become their own company."

"You're lying. I know Quincy would never allow such a thing to happen."

"Well, that's all I know. Regardless, I want to make another request of the Knight Sabers."

"You are aware, of course, that there has been little Boomer activity in MegaTokyo as of late, and thus the trail of the Knight Sabers would be difficult for me to track this time." Sylia turned away from Fargo to look up at another model.

"I don't care. I just want to find out the nature of the deal between Genom and Sun."

Sylia shook her head. "The news report was very forthcoming, and I see no reason to believe that there was more to it than a simple information technology deal."

"Well, I'm hungry right now. Maybe I'll remember more if I get something to eat."

"Very well then. I know a good place in the area, if it is still there."

* * *

Priss wiped off all her makeup and watched the colors go down the sink. She now truly understood the meaning of a "nonstop" concert. She and her band had only performed once per hour, but they'd been going at it for twenty four hours now. When they weren't busy preparing or performing, they'd been furiously shouting and dancing in the audience.

The guitarrist and bassist walked up to her. "I think we ought to celebrate," said the guitarrist.

The drummer woke up from the floor. "Ah, we've already been partying too hard. I wanna relax."

The keyboarder entered the room. "You know what? I just want to eat at a half-decent place."

Priss was already putting on her bike helmet. "What do you mean by half-decent?"

"I mean, I wanna just blow a bunch of money on a place that's not crawling with insects and dirt!"

"Whatever. We'll stop by the first place we see."

* * *

Leon tried his best to fend off Daley. "So, ah, Mr. Kirkbride, we at the AD Police have a lot of experience dealing with Boomers. I don't think it's a waste of our time to be here."

Zax sighed. "Do you ever shut up? You're giving me a freaking headache." He saw Leon's face looking for words. "And I bet your love life sucks, too. That's why the ADP had no problems with sending you over on a stupid 'advising' mission. You prolly annoyed the hell outta yer chief, so he sent ya over to be rid of you for a while."

Daley leaned near Leon's head. "Everything would be easier for you if you would just come over to my place one of these days."

Zax slammed his locker shut. "Your advice put _my_ men at unncecessary risk, and that's the end of that."

* * *

Uncharacteristically, Nene was not even eating her food, but was listening intently to this boy genius. It seemed odd for him to have taken her to such an expensive restaurant, especially when he himself was not exactly wearing a shirt or tie, but his profound knowledge more than made up for it.

"So anybody can submit anything they want to the kernel. In fact, you can just download it yourself and do whatever you want to it. It's really amazing."

Nene said, "Uh-huh" as her eyes remained wide in wonder.

"And they're closely linked with a website called Slashdot. I mean, slashdot.org, it's a news site. I read it every single day."

Nene was absolutely speechless.

In a private room in the same restaurant, Linna and her lawyer hastily munched on noodles and rice while the rest of her partners ate somewhat more casually. "So the key is to focus on the integrity of your report. They're gonna attack the validity of your data and all that," continued the lawyer.

"I'm sorry, could you speak normal English?" Linna asked. "I do not understand why you say 'and all that.'" She nervously smiled.

The lawyer was stunned. "Huh, I didn't say that."

Everyone else turned to him and shouted "Yes you did!"

"Oh, whatever..." He solemnly turned back to his food.

Sylia and Fargo passed right in front of Nene, but Nene was so busy hearing the boy say "They're represented by a cute demon logo, with a devil's pitchfork" that she did not see Sylia pass by. Sylia turned to Fargo to mention something about the Bu-33S and did not see Nene during the one moment she could have.

Priss and the Replicants were woken up at their table by the waiter. "Are you going to pay anytime soon?" asked the waiter.

Priss started snoring. The waiter decided that they were not ready to pay yet. Her face was buried in her arms. The rest of the Replicants were slumped in their chairs, or in some cases on the floor.

The waiter continued on to meet somebody who had just come in through the door. This somebody was extremely tall, muscular, and bulky. He wore shades and a dark suit. The waiter took the initiative to ask, "Would you like the human or boomer menu?"

The fellow did not answer with words. He did, however, spit a laser beam through the waiter's head. The waiter flailed around and tried to grab the spot where his neck was as hydraulic fluid sprayed out. The Boomer then tossed the waiter to the side, smashing it into pieces and leaving a hole in the wall.

The manager, who was sitting at the desk, immediately hit a red button. Thick barriers suddenly popped out of the floor, isolating each individual table and the desk in a prison of solid walls. The Boomer punched a wall but barely scratched the paint. It screamed in anger and shot a laser into the wall.

"The emergency anti-Boomer system has been activated. Firearms are being dispensed from the ceiling. Fire on all berserk Boomers at will if they should penetrate your wall."

The gun that fell on her head woke Priss up.

* * *

Zax leered at the front door of the restaurant. "McNichol, Wong, stay here and don't move. If the Boomer comes out, shoot it."

"Aye-aye!" acknowledged Leon.

"Alright. I'm going to start by releasing the lock on the front door. We'll reassess the situation then." They could hear the sounds of something banging on a wall and shooting lasers at it. Zax popped open a small panel to the side of the door and typed in a numerical code. The doors released some steam and seemed to relax as it suddenly slid out some.

Zax took a stick from his holster. His gloves glowed faintly as the stick suddenly assembled itself into a large handgun. He pointed at the door. After a few seconds, he put one hand on the door. Finally, he kicked it in. He surprised the five Bu-55Cs inside who were trying to knock down one of the walls.

While Zax blew them apart with his handgun, he commented, "The manager reported _one_ Boomer. Apparently, more came soon after." One of the Boomers got up again, so he kicked its stomach in. "Stay there for a minute." He carefully walked near the desk while pointing his gun further down the corridor. All of the walls were perfectly intact, and the noises had stopped. That meant that those five Boomers were probably the only ones here right now.

He carefully typed a numeric code into one of the larger walls, causing it to slide open and reveal the manager's desk. The manager came out after he saw Zax.

"I think all's clear. I'm going to start taking deactivating the barriers, one by one." The manager nodded. Zax did as he said, until the whole restaurant was clear. It was uneventful, although stressful, since Zax had to remain prepared as each wall came down. The people were calm as he talked to each table about the situation before relaxing more barriers.

He walked over to the doorway and told Leon and Daley, "All clear. This incident is finished, so we can---"

The door's security barrier suddenly slammed shut as Zax jumped back from it. He turned around and saw all the window barriers also go up. Most of the people in the restaurant started panicking - they had been calm before, when Zax was still defusing the situation.

"We're locked in. Grab your guns again and take cover behind the manager's desk," he announced. As they all scrambled, four of the people in the crowd seemed to especially know what they were doing. It was as if they had experience that extended quite a bit farther than normal public safety education. Zax nodded to the manager, and the desk's barriers went up again. It wasn't a busy night, so everybody had some breathing room back there. Zax saw that nobody was left out and looked over the rest of the restaurant. It dawned on him that the five Boomers were merely a diversion. Whoever was serious enough to gather five of them would have also been smart enough to know what it took to break down these walls.

The Knight Sabers immediately recognized each other. To anyone else, this was nothing more than just seeing who they got to spend this Boomer alert with. But the four women knew that fate had brought them back together again. They could not say a word to each other, but they all knew they would have to arrange something later. Everyone else talked to each other as if there was not an alert going on, except for the Replicants who were very confused.

Nene's companion commented, "This happens a lot, you get used to it." Nene nodded to him. The other three struggled to contain their inner laughter at Nene for managing to go out with that kind of a boy for a date.

In the meantime, Zax carefully walked near the main walls of the restaurant. Nothing.

He waited while pointing his gun at a vent shaft. Nothing.

Leon shouted from the outside, "We're calling backup, okay?"

Zax turned to face the wall. "Hurry up." When he turned around again, he was staring right at a very ugly creature that could only be a Boomer.

It reached out for him, but he deftly sidestepped the grab. He responded by kicking straight up into its chin, making it stumble back but little else. He took this opportunity to open fire on it, but the high-powered shells exploded harmlessly on its armor plating.

The crowd inside the tight space stopped talking. They came to understand that something was wrong.

Zax stuck the gun back into his belt, where it was disassembled and absorbed into the side of the belt. The Boomer got into a very proper Kung-Fu stance. Zax responded with his own Krev Maga stance. He tested the Boomer with a few jabs and a low kick, but the Boomer properly blocked all of them.

"Since when did Boomers know Kung Fu?" he wondered out loud.

"I will not divulge the information," it replied. So they continued sparring. Zax knew that he could not afford a hit to the body, whereas the Boomer's body plate was able to withstand the power of his gun.

"He's in trouble!" exclaimed the manager. He pointed to an array of small video screens that showed what the surveillance cameras saw. "We have to do something!"

"Yeah - hide," answered Nene's companion. Her faith in him was totally shaken. She had thought he would be such a brave young man, ready to face that Boomer in battle no matter what the cost. Perhaps she still did not completely understand Americans.

Zax tried to catch an incoming roundhouse and throw the Boomer. However, as the Boomer flew towards the ground while being held by its leg, it twisted around and threw Zax instead. He crashed into a table, but his shirt took most of the force. He backflipped onto his feet. He would have to try out some of the undocumented functions of the DarkSuit.

He made a punching motion towards the Boomer, creating a large spinning fist-like image that smashed the Boomer against the wall while crushing all the tables in between.

Priss knew she had seen an attack like that before.

The Boomer immediately picked itself back up, its armor undented. It was surprised, but undaunted. It popped open one of its arms to reveal a gigantic cannon. Its legs also popped open and seemed to stick supports deep into the nice restaurant carpet.

Priss shouted in Japanese, "Forget this!" She hit a green button on the desk, lowering the barrier, and opened fire on the Boomer's exposed parts as soon as she saw it. The others wanted to say something but were too stunned.

The Boomer turned to look at Priss shortly before its legs buckled from under it. It tried to stand up but its legs started falling apart.

Zax took the opportunity to run at the Boomer and grab its neck. The Boomer grabbed his hands and tried to pry him off, but it could not. Priss ran out to the midst of the restaurant and started banging on the Boomer's head with the stock of her gun.

Nene tried to get up to help but tripped over her friend and fell crashing into Sylia who fell into Linna.

Zax finally tore out the Boomer's neck and threw the head away. He wondered what the hell that crazy woman was thinking and pulled the Boomer away from her. He plunged one arm deep into the Boomer's neck cavity and pulled out its computing and data units.

Priss muttered something about incompetent cops and the AD Police, none of which Zax understood. Well, he did understand "AD Police."

Just as everyone else in the crowd had managed to sort themselves out amidst cursing and grunting, Leon crashed through the front door with a heavily armed SWAT squad.

"What took you so long?" asked Zax. "I could've used some help here."

Leon looked embarrassed. "Well, we were stuck in traffic, because you crazy Americans can't build a half-decent subway system and you can't drive either! Maybe if you had--- NANI?"

Priss turned and saw that the SWAT team member screaming gibberish was actually Leon!

Nene peeked up from the desk and fell over backwards. Again.

Linna and Sylia saw the figure at the door and froze.

Priss shouted, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Zax stomped on a broken table. "Listen, could you please stop with that Japanese gibberish? Here in America, we speak English, and that's that. Anyways, we're going to set things straight. First, I'm the unit leader, and even if you're a guest adviser from the AD Police, you do as I say. Second, you all need to shut up so we can have some law and order. Third, all of the restaurant patrons stay for interrogation."

The SWAT team members began to clean up the mess while the manager called up his insurance agent. Everyone else was gathered together for interrogation. Sylia discreetly told the others, "Remember rule nine," when the SWAT troopers, Leon, and Daley weren't looking.

Leon got the opportunity to interrogate all the Japanese-speaking patrons, which coincidentally happened to be exactly eight. After he quickly sent the Replicants on their way (to get driven to their hotel because they delivered an authentic demonstration of the drunken man's walk), he started with Priss.

"So, Priss-chan, why weren't you wearing your night tight metal suit, hmm? You look so good in it!"

Priss kneed Leon in the groin as hard as she could. She screamed at him, "Don't call me that!" Linna, Nene, and Sylia were giggling madly.

"What the hell are you doing here anyways?" Priss asked.

"I'm here to teach the Americans the true way of fighting Boomers!" Leon struck a pose.

Priss gaped. Then started laughing. "You? Teach them? Teach them how to get killed, maybe!"

Leon folded his arms. "Just you wait and see."

Daley grabbed Leon by the shoulder. "Shouldn't you be asking them what they were doing here? And by the way, we're still on for San Francisco tomorrow."

Leon sighed. It would be a long evening.

End Chapter 2: Restaurant Rumble


	3. Chapter 3: Burn Down

Silicon Valley 2033

Chapter 3: Burn Down

* * *

"So, Mr. Fargo, if that is your real name," continued the FBI agent. "What are you doing in the States right now?"

Fargo was starting to grow a full beard by now. His clothing was especially ruffled due to some trouble in the restaurant. He shook his head.

"We know of your history. You have served an important position in every single major company for the past twenty years and nobody ever asked questions about you. You have even been directly linked to vigilante groups," the agent put his hands on the table, "and you know about some very sensitive issues that even we couldn't get into."

Fargo looked up at the agent. "Listen, I think you have the wrong man. I was just eating at a restaurant with my girlfriend and we were vacationing."

The agent put his face very close to Fargo's. "We fingerprinted you and scanned your retinas when you came in. You're not fooling anybody. And the lady you say is your girlfriend denies having such a relationship with you."

Fargo struggled a smirk. "I didn't do anything. And you know, she has this denial complex."

The agent threw the table over. "You endangered public safety by being a target for someone who's obviously very serious about capturing you alive."

"Nothing I can do about that."

"You were going to hire the Knight Sabers for a very dangerous job. And it involves Quincy."

"Doesn't it always?"

"Don't bullshit me you punk. The moment you came here, you exposed the whole state to some serious shit. It's related to the Son of Sun too, isn't it? Isn't it?"

Fargo sighed and closed his eyes.

"You know, we could easily send you on over to the NSA. They don't follow as many rules about interrogations."

"Go ahead. Put me under a deep psycho scanner."

The people behind the window, who were out of view and watching intently, turned to each other.

* * *

Jeena stared down the scope of her rifle. The Boomers did not move from their positions inside the building. Instead, they waited patiently for the troopers to get closer.

She radioed in, "Do not advance. I repeat, do not advance, over." This was very strange. Boomers were not known for their incredible patience, and these ones were starting to outlast the patience of even her lazy unit. In fact, the Boomers were using very good tactics inside the building itself - it was impossible to get them out without laying siege to the whole thing.

She pressed a different button on her radio and radioed in, "This is unit 431 requesting backup, targets are well-entrenched, over."

"Unit 211 is coming to back up unit 431, over," replied Zax's voice.

Jeena turned her scope slightly to zoom in further on the window she was watching. One of the Boomers inside was still moving around, but she could not tell what it was doing. The rest continued to watch all of the windows and entrances.

* * *

Priss was held back from the shining motorcycle by some flexible barriers. The warehouse was so large, she didn't know if she would be able to browse through the whole convention in one day. The few motorcycles that she had been allowed to sit on and rev up were weak.

She decided to give up and keep walking. After the last few times she had begged the exhibitioners to let her try their cycles out and had gotten turned down, she was getting the impression that Americans were a bit more protective of their property. The next cycle she came to looked very familiar.

It was a true beauty. Its twin monster exhaust pipes were gold-plated, and the body itself was a nice red. The instrument panel was a piece of military hardware. Priss saw that the mechanic was on the other side of the bike. His jumpsuit was labeled "Nobel Prize for Science."

She knew that guy from somewhere! "Hey, Ojisan!"

Dr. Raven jumped and turned around. "Call me Doctor! Still as rude as ever, Priss?"

"Yeah, I fit right in with the natives. You finally got it fixed?"

"No thanks to your recklessness! It took just as much work to bend it back into shape as it did to build it! Mackie vowed never to let you near it again!"

"Hey, where is Mackie anyways? I don't see him around."

"He's staying with Sylia in a hotel somewhere." Raven turned back to a podium he had been working on. He was attaching parts to it to show off the insides of the cycle. "By the way, we made some special modifications to it. We tried to make it idiot proof, but we need to test it to make sure."

"Idiot proof? What do you mean by that?"

"Stop by my friend's place sometime. He owns his own garage near here." Raven handed her a business card.

* * *

"So, Ms. Yamazaki, about these memos that your company had audited. Who did the analysis on them?"

"I did," Linna answered. American-style court cases took such a long time.

"Describe your analysis." The lawyer wasn't taking it much better, since he had been working on the trial for a whole month before Linna had flown in.

"I found that Larry Ellison had written some comments about his business plans and his dealings."

"For example?"

"He expressed the desire to kill Bill Gates once and for all. He noted that his next target would be Quincy."

"Was there anything in the memos that he did not publicly announce?"

"Yes, he talked about some of his purchases."

"Which purchases, exactly?"

"He purchased a number of Boomers with special modifications to behave like samurai. He wanted to put these Boomers in his ranch."

The lawyer turned around for a moment. "I would like to present Exhibit R: the Boomers in question."

About ten Boomers dressed in traditional Samurai armor with katanas at their sides walked onto the court floor. They willingly relinquished their swords and sat down on the floor in honorable fashion.

The lawyer turned back to Linna and continued, "Do the memos mention anything about the cost of these Boomers?"

Linna realized that she was about to mention the most important thing in the whole entire trial. "Yes, the memos described the total cost of the purchase as being one hundred thousand US dollars."

She hoped that she would be finished for now.

* * *

Sylia was sitting in a very nice office. As far as she could tell by the things on the walls, the agent interrogating her had once made national headlines for being a former con artist who had stolen a total of six billion dollars before being caught at the age of eighteen. Mackie was not quite that brilliant.

"If you're not his girlfriend or spouse, then what is your relationship with him?"

"We talk about business. We don't normally talk very much."

"Did Fargo ever talk to you about the deal between Genom and Sun?"

"No."

The FBI agent realized that this Ms. Stingray was either very proud of herself or highly trained in the art of black ops. Very likely both. "I'll take that as a yes. What exactly did he mention?"

"He was about to tell me at dinner."

"Did Fargo ever tell you that he is currently working directly under the Prime Minister of France for the purposes of espionage and sabotage?"

Sylia was stunned.

"I'm willing to bet that he also failed to mention that he is the project leader for France's Project 2502. If it's anything like the Project 2501 that came out of Hong Kong, you know very well what this means."

Sylia hoped that he wouldn't ask her about the Knight Sabers too. Otherwise, she would be in quite a bit of trouble.

* * *

Nene yawned loudly, but this did not stop the boy from continuing to talk about things she could care less about.

"And that's how Intel got into the business of microprocessors."

She had been kept up all night just listening to him go on and on about technology and hacking and computers. It turned out that it just wasn't as cool when you listened to it for twelve hours straight. She was incredibly hungry right now and would have liked a great delicacy as a reward for enduring this suffering. Cake would be very appropriate.

"...and this type of encryption is most often used by the French. Let me show you."

She blinked. He was actually going to touch a computer! "Um, can I do it?"

After two seconds of the boy just looking at her, he decided "Sure."

Finally! After hours upon hours of listening to the most boring things she had ever heard, and not daring to talk back because she understood so little of this stupid counterintuitive language, she would have a chance to do what she loved most. She had felt sorry that she acknowledged her understanding of any English at all to this boy, and indeed, regretted letting Leon teach her enough to understand his invitation to hell. She cracked her fingers and got to typing. Within a few minutes, she was looking at a directory listing of the French government's most secret files. She clicked on a random file, like one named "Project 2502.xml" and looked at the raw data.

She caught the statistics, measurements, and personality profiles of Sylia, Linna, Priss, and last but not least, herself in the midst of the gigantic file.

Lucky for her, this boy didn't have the courtesy to have asked her what her name was.

"I bet that last one is ferocious," commented the boy.

* * *

Jeena saw a sudden change in the Boomers. "They're going to leave, over."

"Acknowledged, unit leader, we are getting into ambush position, over," replied the ear of her headset.

She exhaled slightly as she turned several degrees to the right. They were headed for the front door, and she was going to make sure that they fell down as soon as they dared to leave the safety of the building's walls. Her position in the bushes was not the best possible hiding place, but she knew that she was well-covered if they were to ever try to fire on her.

She let her full breath out and fired.

But when she recovered from the recoil, the Boomer was holding a plate of solid armor. It was slightly dented near where the center of her scope was.

The troopers were staring at about six Boomers in total. Two of them were holding plates of solid armor to guard against sniper attacks from the sides. The other four opened up their chests.

* * *

"You are going to point out which of these buildings is your current office," said the agent to Fargo. They were in the back of a black car driving down a commercial road.

Fargo had been shaved - almost forcefully - and didn't look quite so horrible now. "I told you, I live and work in Japan."

"That's your office, isn't it?" the agent realized, pointing to the scene of a SWAT dispatch. There were at least two trucks with several troopers hiding behind them, looking around the corners at a smaller commercial building.

Suddenly, the trucks exploded and flew into the middle of the street. The troopers flew all the way across to the other side. The driver slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing a flying trooper who was on fire.

Fargo came to understand that he was in deep trouble as he watched the SWAT vans crash into the ground and break apart as melting chunks of flaming steel.

* * *

Jeena adjusted by shooting out the Boomer's legs, causing it to fall down so that she could finish off the rest of it. But it was too late. Her whole unit had been killed. All because the Boomers were finally starting to learn tactics. What a concept - Boomers thinking. It wasn't so long ago in her memory that she had been discussing the concept of Boomers having emotions with that stupid rookie.

She saw Zax's van pull up short of the firing arc of the Boomers. She recognized Leon and his partner coming out of the back. She couldn't stay here, though, now that the other five Boomers had noticed the flash of her muzzle. She rolled sideways to her feet and started running, with one of them giving chase.

The Boomer was about to fire at her with its mouth laser, but it suddenly started convulsing as something pounded it from the side and shredded it into a pile of blue mass. Leon blew off the smoke from his Stomach Gun and smiled at Jeena. "Reinforcements have arrived," he announced.

"Great - cover me while I snipe them some more." Something in that poor little man had definitely changed. For starters, he was actually confident about getting close to Boomers and shooting them. She tumbled behind the van and brought her rifle around into position again.

Daley took his time in drawing his service revolver and pointing at the next Boomer. This Boomer was cartwheeling and somersaulting around, making it difficult if not impossible to hit. In fact, it was quite odd that a Bu-55C should be so adept in acrobatics. Such a thing would have been incredibly unbelievable and just plain wrong if it was not happening right now. He fired one shot.

The Boomer suddenly fell to the ground as the high-powered tag stuck to its leg shocked it with millions of volts of electricity. It quickly started loosing its fluids and fell apart. Daley grinned and twirled his revolver. "Sometimes the delicate touch of a woman is needed."

During that time, Zax had dispatched the remaining Boomers. He walked over to the FBI car, now parked a comfortable distance away from the battlefield.

As the window of the driver rolled down, Zax took the initiative to ask, "What kind of a plot are we involved in now?"

* * *

Nene was frozen with horror. The boy had taken off his face mask to reveal a much older man with a voice manipulator on his throat. She slowly raised her hands as the "boy" levelled a gun to her head.

End Chapter 3: Burn Down


	4. Chapter 4: Back in Business

Silicon Valley 2033

Chapter 4: Back in Business

* * *

Sylia stood beneath the streetlight alone in the midst of dark night. The roads and sidewalks were cleaned often and each building on the street had bushes and orchards on their lawns. The sky was partly cloudy, the intense urban light shining up as strongly as the moon shone down. She heard someone shuffling toward her and turned to look.

"I'm sorry, Sylia," Fargo said. As he came closer, she could see that he looked worse than usual.

"You kept on requesting services of the Knight Sabers so that you could uncover their identities and eventually steal their technology." Sylia was not going to play around with him.

"I was going to jump ship soon. Anyways, I couldn't find out who their leader was."

"I trusted that you did not have ulterior motives for these meetings."

"What, finding out more about Genom and damaging them isn't enough for you? I was honest. That was the end purpose."

"A common misconception, Fargo. You know me better than that."

"Hey, easy there. I'm just a bum. I thought you'd like to get revenge for the death of your father."

"Perhaps if you told me how you had been planning to do that, I might not have done business with you."

Fargo took a step back and leaned on a corporate orange tree. "Um, don't you think you're being a little hard on me, Ms. Stingray?"

"I can't believe that you were just serving the French all along. Goodbye." As soon as she said goodbye, a truck pulled in and stopped at the curb in front of her. She walked to the passenger door and opened it.

Fargo picked himself up from the tree and reached for her. "Hey, does that mean the deal's off?"

Sylia was now sitting inside the seat. She slammed the door and the truck sped away.

Mackie turned to Sylia for a moment to say, "Sister, I think we're in trouble."

"What is it, Mackie?"

"Nene's homing beacon stopped a few hours ago. Before that, she was taken to a residential area."

Sylia closed her eyes and tilted her head back. "We need to gather Priss and Linna. It's obvious that someone knows who we are."

* * *

Priss weaved in and out of the night traffic on her brand new motorcycle. It was actually similar to one she had tried out once before, but she had to let that cycle crash and burn on the highway. There were some very odd people in America; while she sometimes had the highways all to herself late at night, there was a steady amount of light traffic even at these hours. She watched the exit signs and looked intently for Mowry Avenue, where Sylia had told her to meet.

She turned off into the exit and burned the tires as she made a hard left at the intersection. She passed by a number of shopping centers and shops before she finally came to a quieter part of the city. She saw the hotel ahead to her right and finally began to slow down.

Nobody she recognized was there. She drove to the front entrance and driveway, but nobody was there either. She pulled around to the back exits, but she saw nobody there either. She let the cycle lean to the side as she put her foot down and stopped for a moment. Something was wrong.

"Are you lost?"

Priss almost jumped out of her seat as she looked up to see a tall gentleman in a black suit with sunglasses. More surprising was that she had been asked in Japanese, and she had gotten used to listening to so much English during her vacation.

"I'm waiting for a friend," was her simple reply.

"Perhaps I can help you find your friend," said the gentleman with a smile. He chuckled coldy, then continued, "You know, it's not safe for women around here at this time."

"Thanks for the offer mister, but I can take care of myself."

He started walking towards her and said, "We shall see."

He did not have a chance to see the motorcycle accelerate so quickly. The front tire lifted off the ground and planted itself firmly on his face, tearing off false flesh to reveal his Boomer head.

Priss vaulted right over the Boomer and skidded around to the front of the hotel, where two more Boomers were waiting. One of them jumped at her but suddenly shook hard in midair and fell straight down again. Priss turned her head to see Linna's hardsuit withdraw a clenched fist from the Boomer's back.

"Run!" she heard Linna shout beneath her helmet, so she kept on zooming down the street as a Boomer gave chase. It started out running after her, but switched to rocket boosters and began to gain on her quickly.

Linna turned around to see the Boomer that Priss had run over. It was very angry and running straight for her.

She instinctively twirled around and let her ribbons slam right into the Boomer's body. But it had dropped to its butt and was sliding as if trying to make a run in baseball. Her ribbons passed straight over it.

The Boomer sat up again and lunged forward at her. She punched right for its face, but it swatted her arm away. She then tried to spin around into a kick, but it blocked that attempt with its other hand. The Boomer's technique was, for a Boomer, incredibly good. It then opened up its chest to reveal the deadly laser array. Linna did not have enough time to point her hand at it to fire first. The array started to glow.

Until a monomolecular blade came through. Sylia pulled her blade up to cleave through its head too.

They could see five more Boomers leaping into the hotel's parking lot from the street. "There's too many of them!" Linna realized.

One of the Boomers was suddenly flattened backwards into the ground by an intense beam of heat. Mackie's voice declared, "No there isn't!" The tremendous weight of Mackie's heavy battlemover stomped into the ground, breaking up the concrete, as he brought his beam cannon into position again.

* * *

Zax was half-asleep in the back seat of his own SWAT van. Those two ADP officers were good for something: they were driving for this patrol, letting him relax a bit.

He was not sleeping entirely, because Leon was still talking about some of his glory days of last year. "And then I was driving down an empty freeway, investigating a report of an accident, when I saw a woman on a motorcycle and a Boomer pass right by my car!"

Daley and Zax suddenly jumped to their feet when they saw exactly that happen right by their windows. Zax reached forward and pulled the steering wheel hard out of Leon's hands, spinning the van around to give chase.

Leon was allowed to keep on driving straight again while Zax hit the alarm button on the dashboard. "This is unit 211, we have sighted a Boomer chasing someone on a motorcycle on Mowry Avenue in the direction of Cedar Boulevard, giving chase, over." There weren't many patrols late at night, but hopefully someone would be close enough to intercept.

"Unit 431 acknowledges, currently at Decoto Road, will try to intercept, over," replied Jeena's voice.

Zax pulled off a panel on Daley's side of the dashboard and hit a red button while grabbing onto Daley's seat with his other hand. The van suddenly lurched forward as Leon noticed the speedometer increasing beyond any reasonable rate of acceleration.

"Hey, what did you do?" Daley asked as he looked in a side-view mirror. The van had sprouted rocket boosters from the sides and back, and he could also see that they were passing by everyone else as if they were purposely driving backwards.

"Is this safe?" Daley asked.

"Standard procedure when chasing Boomers," calmly replied Zax.

"Is this really safe?" Daley shouted.

"Well, there have been fatalities in the past," calmly replied Zax.

Leon was too busy dodging everyone in front of him to wonder how the van's red button could be so much more powerful than his car's own.

* * *

Jeena leaned out of the window and pointed her rifle down the road. Her replacement unit, whom she had only gotten to know a few hours ago, had established a roadblock made of three ancient tanks lined up next to each other. They had also placed warning markers and barriers so that nobody would flatten themselves up against the tanks by accident.

Jeena let the scope of her rifle auto-track the Boomer. Satisfied that it was close enough for the scope's natural vector correction to work, she fired.

The Boomer's head flew right off, and soon its body was being torn apart by the force of the rifle too. She saw the woman on the motorcycle look back and see it, yet continue as fast as she could. Jeena wondered what that crazy woman thought she was doing.

Then she lowered her rifle and saw Boomers right in front of the roadblock. She fired on them too, but they hid behind the roadblock. She was forced to hide back inside the van as they opened fire on her with machine guns. The windows all over her van started cracking in many places, and pieces of her windshield were starting to fall in.

Priss saw the Boomers come out from the roadblock again and run towards her. She only had a split second to think but knew her plan would work.

The front tire of her bike lifted up just enough to plant itself into a Boomer's chest. Before the Boomer had completely fallen down, her rear wheel also rode up the front of its body, sending her flying through the air. Her front wheel then grabbed a hold of the top of one of the tanks and let her jump safely back down to the other side.

Jeena took the opportunity to finish off the two Boomers while they were still surprised.

* * *

Quincy was looking especially angry today. He reflected this mood in his voice as well. "Boomers are vanishing from the sight and influence of the OMS with each hour. This is unacceptable."

One board member reasoned, "None of the killer dolls have been compromised, and the satellites have not received any orders we did not send."

Quincy did not allow him to speak another sentence. "That may change soon. We still do not know the source of the anomaly. Furthermore, our efforts to reduce the cost of the OMS was almost sabotaged by hired mercenaries."

"We have dedicated ourselves to the task of finding the perpetrator," explained another board member.

"But you have not completed the task," Quincy reminded them. "In the meantime, I will continue to watch you all without ceasing."

Quincy's looming image disappeared from the viewscreen. The board members were able to sit down again.

"That man seems to live forever," commented a board member.

"You musn't speak of the chairman's lifespan!" protested the man next to him.

A laser cannon shot melted the curious board member for reinforcing effect.

* * *

Nene woke up in a room lit only by a single red lightbulb hanging from a dirty concrete ceiling. She fell down off a metal folding chair onto cold gray asphalt. When she sat up again, she saw that the room was completely empty except for the light, her chair, and a rusty reinforced door in the wall. She reached into her shirt and pulled out her homing beacon.

It was conserving power, since its battery hadn't been changed for a long time. She was going to change the battery this morning, but it was too late. The rest of her possessions, including everything in her pockets, were gone. She tried to force the beacon to actively broadcast again, but it would not.

She tried to pull the casing of the beacon off, but it would not break. Sylia had made them too well. Nene then bit into the casing and tried to tear it off. She had to stop and put her hands to her mouth to comfort the pain left in her teeth. She still had one hope, but she was loath to admit it.

After a few minutes of thinking hard, though, she gave in. She wedged one end of the beacon into the folding chair. She then stood up on the chair while saying to herself, "Don't give up now! You can do it!"

She jumped up as high as she could and landed on the chair again. She fell off the chair as soon as her feet connected, but at least the casing of the beacon was off. She quickly dusted herself off and picked it up. She held it up to the light and thought about whether or not this was really safe.

"Here we go," she announced to herself. She unscrewed the lightbulb, unscrewed the glass bulb out of the base, and carefully tied filaments from the bulb base onto tiny wires in the beacon. She then put the bulb base back into the socket with the beacon hanging delicately from it by what looked like a few metal hairs.

After taking a few sparks to the face, Nene was satisfied that the beacon was now fully powered and actively broadcasting. She still lamented over the damage her face probably suffered - she might have blemishes showing - but at least she would be rescued.

She was also very hungry.

End Chapter 4: Back in Business


	5. Chapter 5: Revelation

Silicon Valley 2033

Chapter 5: Revelation

* * *

Fargo was sitting at a table with a large umbrella-like contraption over it, held by a pole in the center of the table. The air smelled like the river and the sky was a pale light blue. He listened to the distant sound of an accordion playing music to tourists while he sipped on his coffee. A well-dressed woman with short blue-black hair sat opposite of him.

"Monsieur, you can only track them for so long," said the woman.

"I'm getting close to the leader," Fargo replied. "I've found out their base of operations, their methodology, everything. It won't be long before I can deliver their hardsuits to you."

And then Fargo remembered himself making violent and unloving relations with the woman in a cheap two-story hotel elsewhere in Paris. He knew that she made herself look like Sylia to strengthen their control over him. He knew that her hair wasn't really bluish-black and that it was not always short. But this was a convenient bonus on top of his normal pay, except he knew that it was terrible to do such a thing with his employer.

And he knew that there was something about Sylia that he couldn't quite put his finger on. But he knew that she was more than just a go-between for him and the Knight Sabers.

Zax slapped him across the face. "What were the specifications of your contract with France?"

"My mission was to establish a base of cultural dominance. Real people would be replaced with Boomers who would be strongly pro-French. We had already carried out this program to its third phase in Quebec."

Jeena slapped him the other way with her left arm.

"Nice try, but we don't buy it. Shortly after you were caught in the country, the Knight Sabers were sighted near here. Not only that, but they were under attack by Boomers whose data units contained full understanding of the French language." Jeena wiped off some of Fargo's blood from her arm. Polishing it was becoming a chore.

Fargo leaned his head back and looked up at the lightbulb. "What are you going to do to me now?"

An FBI agent entered the room. "We've arrived at the complex."

* * *

Nene stepped into the heels of her hardsuit. She then put her hands into its hands and stood up straight. Once it was finished clamping on to her, she pulled her shirt off of the head of Mackie's battlemover.

She looked at its sensor eye for a moment as the whole situation began to make sense to her. She knew now why everything happened the way it did.

Mackie's battlemover had variable x-ray vision.

Linna grabbed Nene's arm. "We have to hurry!" While Mackie covered their backs, Linna pulled her through hallways and stairs until they reached a hatch in the ceiling. Linna punched it open with a bang.

Nene poked her head out to look around. They had arrived at a totally abandoned warehouse. At the far side, she saw Priss and Sylia fending off six Boomers.

Priss had a Boomer's disembodied arm wrapped around her neck. While she tried to stop it from squeezing her neck further with one hand, she punched out the chest of a Boomer with her other. Three more jumped on top of her and tried to pin her down. She spun around, kicking them all off, and fired needles into each one of them. She took a laser cannon blast in the back from a Boomer she hadn't seen before, but her hardsuit had managed to stay intact. The next laser cannon shot missed her face and instead blew off the Boomer arm that was on her neck. The offending Boomer stopped for a moment, then fell into thirds as Linna approached from behind it.

But more and more Boomers kept on pouring in from every entrance.

"Ten more incoming!" screamed Nene as she tried her best to hold them off with her machine gun. They responded by scattering and going around her sides.

Priss held her side tightly as blood seeped through a crack in her hardsuit. She grabbed a Boomer, punched her hand through its stomach, and held it in the path of a laser array heat blast. Her hand was slightly burned, but at least she was not dead. She took the opportunity to rip the laser arrayed Boomer in half before stomping on its head.

Mackie's battlemover was now visible within the scene of the battle, covered by five Boomers who had climbed onto it. Mackie shifted his hand somewhat, and the Boomers fell off as they were electrocuted and melted into fried proteins.

Sylia's right arm had been broken badly, but she choked back tears of pain to keep on hacking the Boomers to pieces. Even though she was able to jump and fly over them to confuse them, they had rocket boosters in their feet that were independent of the more bulky ones in the back.

Leon's voice echoed through the warehouse from his loudspeaker: "This is the SWAT and ATF! Cease your fighting and we will spare you!"

Priss shouted back, "Whose side are you goons on?" in Japanese. It was not unlikely that Genom owned America's government, too. She doubted that Leon could hear her, but it was worth a try.

Her body was quaking from shock, but she perservered.

* * *

Leon heard a faint but familiar voice from his position. He radioed in, "This is the ADP adviser, do not attack the feminine hardsuits, consider them friendlies, over." Among the responses of the unit leaders who copied, he discerned Zax's and Jeena's voices.

He had the honor of going around to the back while the majority of the force struck from the front and sides. He intercepted a few Boomers running through the parking lot or jumping from behind the rear sound wall. They did not even have a chance to see him pointing his Stomach Gun at their bodies.

Jeena called out to him from behind a bush. She accounted for all of the fallen Boomers in the area that he did not remember shooting himself. "Why do you call it the Stomach Gun, anyways?"

Leon gave her a thumbs-up. "Because it takes guts to use it!"

He suddenly jumped as an invisible figure put its hand on his shoulder. He heard Zax's voice say, "I'm infiltrating from above. Your task will be to exfiltrate the Knight Sabers."

Leon nodded to a slight distortion in his vision in front of him. "By the way... my English isn't very good. What does 'exfiltrate' mean?"

"Well, you know how infiltrate means to get in? Exfiltrate means to get them out!" The distortion withdrew from Leon and seemed to slither up the wall of the warehouse onto the roof.

The Knight Sabers could only watch in awe as the Boomers were cleared away in massive numbers by crushing shockwaves that seemed to come from nowhere. Priss knew she had seen these destructive powers before.

They were Largo's.

* * *

The Bu-55c guards were huddled around the doorway. The door itself had a simple plaque on it that read, "Brian J. Mason Databank Room." Madigan stood a fair distance behind, pointing a simple pistol at it. Quincy suspected something in this very room. He was normally not so hasty to take action, no matter how serious the problem was.

One Boomer kicked the door open. The room itself was not only fully active, but it was still going through massive volumes of data.

The room itself spoke to them, "It is too late. You cannot oppose me now."

Madigan shouted back, "Who are you?"

"Name does not matter," the room intoned. "I have had many names. Perhaps I will take yours."

"Impossible!" she objected. The Boomers made hand motions to ask if it was okay to blow up the room. She raised a hand to put them on hold.

"Come and see."

She lowered her pistol and slowly approached the room. Every step made the room's noises and pulsations throb harder and harder in her head. Finally, before she realized what was happening, she was sitting in the chair with computer apparatus stuck to her head. The sound of data flowing in and out of her was like the hissing of a snake.

* * *

Priss got up from a stretcher. Her helmet was still intact, but she was not sure about the rest of her body. She sat up and felt broken bones move around in her body.

A paramedic put her down again. "Please don't move, miss, or you might kill yourself."

She reached out, pinched the paramedic's nose, and rolled off the stretcher. She blinked her eyes hard and saw Mackie's battlemover. Before the other paramedics could react, she was already running to it.

"How tough does she think she is?" they shouted.

Priss somersaulted right onto the bike that Mackie was in the middle of dropping. It became the Typhoon-3 around her and carried her off into the sky. She recognized Nene clinging onto Mackie's back while Sylia and Linna flew beside them in their own motoroids.

"It's okay," Leon told the ambulance crews. "They'll be fine."

Zax was already removing his DarkSuit. "Pretty amazing that they lasted as long as they did. Especially the dark blue one."

"Yeah. The Knight Sabers have saved our lives a few times in MegaTokyo."

"Is it because they're that good, or because the AD Police is that incompetent?"

Daley held Leon back from trying to punch Zax in the face. Leon shook him off and muttered, "I can't stand the way they insult us," in Japanese.

His curly-haired partner smiled. "Perhaps you should develop a closer kind of comradeship with us, then maybe we'll fight harder."

Leon ignored him, as usual, and walked out to a less crowded area. They were waiting for the CSI people to arrive.

He looked at the stars and wondered, "Isn't Priss tough?"

* * *

The databank room calmed down somewhat and let Madigan's chair turn around to face outside. Madigan looked at several pulverised Boomers laying down in the hallway.

She spoke in unison with the room, "I am Madigan."

End Chapter 5: Revelation


	6. Chapter 6: Crunch Time

Silicon Valley 2033

Chapter 6: Crunch Time

* * *

Seeing "Larry Ellison Sent to Insane Asylum" in large print on every major publication made Linna feel better. The hardest part of her trip was over. She leaned against Nene in the back seat of a large van. She wanted to take in all the sights - all the billboards, corporate logos, and city names of legend. She had always wanted to visit Menlo Park, the place where Thomas Edison did much of his work. It was a shame that she had to destroy a part of it to survive. Nene was so fast asleep that she did not notice.

The van was at least the same size as the Silky Doll company vehicle, except that it was painted a dull brown with only the name of "Dr. Crow" on its side to identify it. Linna and Nene each had two suitcases of clothing behind them. Linna sighed and did not dare move, else she agitate the wound in her arm.

She did not even feel the van pull into an exit, weave through a few local roads, or stop at an old garage where Dr. Raven, Sylia, and Mackie waited. While the driver hugged Dr. Raven and patted him on the back outside, Nene shifted slightly.

Linna looked up at whoever was banging on the window. Priss shouted from outside, "Hey, sleepyhead!" She was wearing a body brace and a few other random bandages, but Linna could tell that she was still acting as if nothing had happened last night. She smiled and waved back through the window while Nene yawned.

"Rough day at work?" Priss asked.

Linna opened the door nearest her and noted that "You shouldn't be talking!"

Priss helped Linna out - although she was well aware of how much her arm hurt right now - and closed the door. Nene banged on the window screaming, "Hey! Don't lock me in here! You mean people!"

The two kept on walking towards the garage.

* * *

They all felt the shock of the explosion, even though they were half a mile away from the scene. They could also see smoke and fire going up in the distance. Zax nodded to a regular police officer and the van was allowed through the traffic barrier.

"Suspects sighted exiting the bank, they are heavily armed and armored, over."

Zax put the radio up to his mouth. "Acknowledged, taking position."

"Suspects appear to be equipped with - WHAT ARE THEY---"

Zax threw the radio into the back of the hair, knocking Leon on the head. He swerved the van around the corner, burning rubber across a series of painted pedestrian lines.

"They're not Boomers, but---" was another unit's death cry.

Zax crashed right into one of the "suspects," a medium-sized man wearing metallic combat armor and wielding an antitank beam launcher. He fell over from being impacted at nearly sixty miles per hour, but got back up.

The man looked for the driver of the van - and, for that matter, the van's occupants. Leon and Daley knew they could buy time by hiding underneath the seats for a few minutes before trying something. Daley crawled close to Leon and whispered, "Let us enjoy ourselves in the midst of the battle."

The man suddenly turned around to watch a strange transparent object punch him in the face. He readjusted his mask and punched back.

Zax's fist landed squarely on the man's, creating a tremendous shock for his whole arm. He felt fabric in the glove start to wear and crack, but the man's arm was crunched into his shoulder. Zax finished him off easily and ran off to take care of the rest of the suspects.

Daley looked up over the seat and saw that Zax had taken care of the suspect. In addition, Zax was dispatching the rest of the suspects even more quickly. It was as if he could create compression waves purely through the power of his gloves. As far as he knew, compression waves normally needed bulky cannons to produce. "Hey, Leon, it's safe. Mr. Kirkbride is taking care of the situation."

As Leon rolled out of the van and onto the pavement, he wondered, "How does he do that?"

* * *

"The test subject continues to resist the influence." Fargo was not interested in his drink or the view of Monterey Bay. His straw rested on the edge of a clear blue bubbling drink. Its friendly appearance concealed its chemistry.

"Either he is very gifted, or the master's theory is wrong," replied the woman. She let her hair rest straight down today. Fargo noticed she had given up pretending that she was Sylia. He was no longer worth the effort to her, he assumed.

"I stole the report of his latest blood test. There are traces of SuperBoomer protein in him, but he still fails to hear Master's call." Children were amazed at the sight of so many seals piling onto the piers, statues commemorated John Steinbeck and his book Of Mice and Men, and sailors leisurely wandered the bay.

The woman gave no sign of recognition. Perhaps she would kill him right now. "Obviously, we will experience difficulty taking back the components."

Fargo squinted against the glare of the sun. "Don't you think we're a bit far away from where we need to be, then?"

The woman continued to sip her exotic drink. "I keep a few things here." She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. "I thought you trusted me."

"I've been arrested - twice - and beat up by the Americans! They know everything that I know! I'm getting just a little bit edgy right now!" Fargo's sweat shook off his face with every exclamation mark. He was squeezing on the table and hurting his own hands.

"Which is why you're staying here." She reached into her pocket for something.

Fargo reclined in his chair while running his hands through his hair. He knew this would have to happen.

The woman threw some false identification and a thick wad of cash onto the table. "You'd best return to Japan."

She got up and left. He no longer had a motivation to live. Sylia knew what his purpose was, so she was never going to get with him. His cybernetic liver's alcohol-filtering capabilities were being pushed to their max. And this woman, who reminded him so much of Sylia, was leaving him too. He put his hand on the supplies, which he would need to escape from the country. He at least had enough mental capacity left in him to figure out what the stuff was for.

She had truly killed him.

* * *

Sylia's serious face was not a weclome sight at this meeting. They were not even meeting at their usual place. They were hiding out in Dr. Crow's garage, a friend of Dr. Raven, in the middle of a dirty neighborhood known only as "East Palo Alto." Satisfied that everyone was paying attention to her, and that they would not leave, she began.

"We are being targeted for some purpose. None of you may return to Japan for the time being."

"We can't be cooped up in a prison like this!" objected Priss. She had many plans for when she got back home. She had to send the Replicants away without a sober driver to take them to their homes.

Linna added, "We shouldn't let our enemies affect us." 

"Actually," Sylia interjected, "we are going to prepare for our next action very carefully. We are in an unfamiliar area and we cannot afford to rush into things. Furthermore, you will need to get acquainted with some new equipment that we will be working with."

A fifth woman appeared in the doorway.

"I would also like to introduce you all to Reika Chang. Reika, this is Priss Asagiri, Linna Yamazaki, and Nene Romanova."

Linna realized that "We've met," while shaking her hand. The others were too shocked to speak.

"It's good to hear that," Sylia continued, "The first order of business is to pick up Reika's hardsuit and motoroid from a pier in San Francisco."

Reika interrupted, "Pardon me, but I thought that all shipping happened in Oakland. My uncle competed with black people for dominance of the harbors there."

"San Francisco is more suitable for keeping a low profile. It also guarantees that our special order won't get mixed up with all the other shipping crates in the warehouse, because there will be no other."

Reika bowed politely. "I am sorry, Commander."

"Please feel at ease, Reika. We're all best friends here."

"Understood."

* * *

Madigan's broken, bloodied body fell on the floor. She rolled slightly from the momentum to reveal the large gunshot wounds in her body. As she lay in the doorway of Brian J. Mason's databank room, a shadow fell over her.

Quincy spoke to the room, "Tell me... during the short time that your name was Madigan, what did you learn?"

The colors and sounds of the room echoed back, "I learned more about my mortal enemy."

Quincy laughed. "Everybody hates the French."

The room was not as amused. "I learned that my enemy is truly the opposite of myself."

"Well, mister V7-28 or Largo or whoever you are, I don't quite see what the big deal is. I presume you mean 'opposite' in the sense that I am mighty and you are not."

A single face-like image formed on the monitors. "This is the true look of a victor! One day, you will bow to me, as well as the rest of the world. You may scoff now, but I am so mighty that I will surely---"

Bits of sizzling mesh and latex hung loosely off of Quincy's cannon-arm, which folded itself back into an arm. "You have no son, no heir to your legacy. I need only to strike at your center and you will die."

One of the speakers of the room struggled to argue otherwise amidst crackling static. "You... underestimate my followers."

"This war has nothing to do with silly mortals. This war is between you and me, and you know well who the victor is."

"But I am greater than you. I am superior in every way, and I continue to become more and more powerful every day."

"Perhaps you may know of a story from the Bible, in which Jesus excorcises a multitude of demons known as 'Legion.' You can figure out the rest."

Quincy reached into his stomach and exploded. When the smoke had cleared, the room was no more.

Quincy walked in from around the corner of a hallway and began digging through the debris.

* * *

"So, Kou, how do you like 'em?" asked Mackie.

Kou stared straight ahead at the road while he drove. "I don't understand."

"How do you... you know... like the touch and feel?"

"The engine and drivetrain were certainly well-made, if that's what you mean."

Mackie slapped himself on the forehead. "I mean, what kind of girls do you like?"

Kou waited for a few minutes before answering. "I enjoy a woman who is polite, refined, intelligent, can manage everything at once, and never says more than she needs to." He glanced at Mackie for a second. "If that's what you mean."

Mackie leaned back in his seat and smiled. "I dunno about you, but... I like girls who have plenty to get a hold of, who can cook and take orders from a man. I want a girl who's never gonna question me, and dedicates herself totally to me."

Kou's mouth made a wry smile. "You have much to learn about being a man, Mackie."

"I'm old enough to vote and join the army already! And I do my fair share of fighting, too."

"There is a certain... substance... that separates a man from a spiky-haired boy. Wait a minute."

Kou changed lanes, but the car following close behind had no difficulty following suit. "So they want a piece of me, eh?" He pulled over to the shoulder.

The driver of the car was not only not a Bu-55C, but one of the most infamous Genom board members. "I mean you no harm," he began.

Reika grabbed Kou's arm to hold him back while Sylia stepped forward. Passing traffic blew dust and garbage along the road.

"I have come to make a request of the Knight Sabers."

Priss gritted her teeth.

"In exchange for ceasing to pursue you, even if you should attack us afterwards, we would like you to do two things."

Sylia stated, "I have reason to believe that the Knight Sabers are engaged in their own business."

The Genom executive chuckled. "In fact, we will protect your identities from anyone else, especially the French, if you help protect a new system and then strike at the center of your troubles."

"You are the center of our problems!" exclaimed Priss.

"Hardly. We are sorry that some of our employees are a bit overzealous in protecting Genom against potential threats, but I assure you that the French will bring about the end of the world if we do not have your assistance in stopping them."

"What about this new system you want us to guard?" asked Sylia.

"We will tell you... if you go to it. You must work under our terms, of course."

They stared at each other for a few moments.

* * *

Leon kicked one of the bodies over onto the street.

"Whatever you do, don't touch them. There's something suspicious about them," commented Zax from afar.

Leon backed off from the body. "Okay, okay, whatever you say."

The eyes flashed red.

"Um... Zax, when are the investigators supposed to come?"

"Two to four minutes, depending on traffic." Zax was walking back toward Leon again. "Since we've closed down most of the roads near here. Why do you ask?"

"It's looooking at you!" suggested Daley. "They may not be Boomers, but they're certainly not human either."

Leon drew his Earthshaker and pointed it at the body. "Only one way to find out." He bent down on one knee and grabbed the body's face-mask with his free hand.

End Chapter 6: Crunch Time


End file.
